ABOUT ITALIAN DESIGN

Discover the Italian design....

BRIEF HISTORY OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN

Industrial design grew out of the industrialized
countries social changes which rised between the end of the
19th and the beginning of the 20th century and it was a
phenomenon linked more to economy than to creative
expression and art; it certainly rose and proliferated
during a great economic and industrial development,
becoming a phenomenon clearly linked to consumption and
production growth; it was then a factor which more or less
contributed to this social change.

In some way design also grew up as a rejection toward
industrial revolution's deep transformation as an effort to
save craft activities and pre-industrial ideas. This was
the principle of all movements from "Arts and Crafts" to
"Bauhaus" school that all see with distrust at industrial
progress causing the aesthetic deterioration of new
everyday objects and the destruction of handmade creation's
traditional forms, even if, in order to be an industrial
design, the product has to be done in an industrial way, so
that off the shelf objects are the heart of design
history.

The most important theory about design's history traces
its origin to the artistic 19th century English movement
called "Arts and Crafts" that makes us attend to applied
arts progress. The artistic-creative process purpose was
everyday objects conception and production; this aim
developed mainly thanks to modern production systems and
modern materials which ensured the exit of the objects from
small craft fields and the launch of an enlarged production
which also allowed to enlarge the recipient public of the
same objects.
The word "industrial design" came to life in the United
States in 1940 and carried on along 20th century, a period
in which production tools entwined with modern planning
philosophies to create objects which should be
aesthetically appealing, useful and constructive according
to a typical rationalist logic.

At the end of first world war tendences and projectual
movements suggesting artistic vanguards in ordinary life
developed in entire Europe. As Italian Futurism said, it
seemed to be possible a new invention of the whole universe
built on a new, modern, future conception; this project
became a human condition's changing instrument which
identified in Bauhaus school the centre of this new general
overview. In the school vanguard artists and designers were
engaged in an educational and concretely practical
experiment, so that the school's products deeply influenced
the entire European culture of project. A real new objects'
expressive language came to life encouraged above all by
the use of new materials like steel, new metals and
glass.

In the fascist Italy young rationalist artists expressed
the same concept transforming the vanguard language into an
instrument of the modernist battle in the occasion of the
antidemocratic dictatorship battle.

In the second postwar period planning rationalist
tendencies evolved, but always preserving the idea of a
more and more enlarged consumption planning.

WHAT HAPPENED THANKS TO DESIGN

In locomotives
rivets replaced nutcases causing one-fourth decrease of the
structure weight.
Sewing machine was covered and put into an ergonomic
container.

Design is also a way to add charm value to a product
usually important just for its usage function, as for
example mobile phone, computer, camera. etc...